Rock Star!
From my friend Brooks Wachtel…
I received an amazing holiday gift the day after Christmas thanks to Ian L. Sitren who arranged for me to meet Fred Bell, the director of the Palm Springs Air Museum. It’s not often a writer gets rock-star treatment, but that’s what the Museum staff – all fans of DogFights – gave me.
I found, to my delight, that the museum even run segments of the series on monitors in front of some of their display aircraft to illustrate the warbird’s stories.
One of the treats was seeing this Phantom, in Midway livery, that we depicted in “Mig Killers of the Midway” an episode I wrote with Cynthia Harrison-Wallach.
We interviewed most of the aviators whose names are emblazoned on the aircraft and brought their combat to life – they were responsible for both the first the very last MIG kill of the Vietnam War.
Here’s Fred Bell and I in front of the F-4 Phantom (thank you, Ian, for the photo). Fred and his staff do a fantastic job and I highly recommend the museum for any fan of history or aviation. They have an amazing collection and it keeps getting better.
For the curious, I’ve included the DogFights episode thanks to the inevitable youtube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfQVehFjvaI
Faster Than The Speed Of Sound!
Today, October 14, in 1947 was the day that famed test pilot Chuck Yeager flew this very airplane, the Bell X-1, faster than the speed of sound. He reached 700mph at 43,000 ft. It was a speed that had seemed totally impenetrable until then. Yeager nick-named the plane “Glamorous Glennis” in tribute to his wife. This is the actual airplane as I photographed it at The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.
Credit goes to my friend Brooks Wachtel who in his daily on Facebook “On This Day” covers the most interesting things in world history. Brooks is an Emmy winning writer who co-created the very respected series “DogFights” for the History Channel among his extensive accomplishments.
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